The first Christmas Book from Sears came out in 1933. The company PR folk issued this reprint, shown here, in the eighties, probably in 1983 to celebrate fifty years of their famous Wish Books. The eighty-eight pages are full of seasonal items especially toys and everything looks amazingly cheap but the average wage was about $1500 a year (though with huge variations across the country) and a third of the working population was unemployed back then. I've split the book into two uploads.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

I've always liked this set of cigarette cards issued by Churchman's (part of Imperial Tobacco) in 1937. The set of forty cards is called Howlers. Named after the incredibly lame jokes on the back of each card, this is from the one called Grammar: The plural of forget-me-not is forget-us-not! It's the lovely illustrations by Rene Bull (1872-1942) that make this a set worth owning. He had a good eye for detail and composition. Google Images has an interesting selection of his work. They were obviously painted quite large and the reduction to cigarette card size makes everything look very precise. Who has the original painting I wonder? Sets are still available if you look round the net but you need to check that they are originals and not reprints.

About Me

I always collected printed examples of what I thought was good design or anything that looked visually interesting. Magazines (especially) Annual Reports, brochures, printed ephemera, in fact anything with type on it.